Dove of peace

01What does the dove of peace stand for?

The dove of peace stands for peace, reconciliation and hope. It is usually shown white, in flight and with an olive branch in its beak. In this form it is one of the oldest signs of peace of all and at the same time one of the best known today.

Unlike the peace sign it has no single creator. Its meaning has grown over centuries from several layers: from the story of the flood, from Christian imagery and from the politics of the 20th century.

That is why it is used in very different ways, in church services as well as on the posters of movements that have nothing to do with religion. What a dove means in a given case depends on who shows it and where.

02Where does the dove as a sign of peace come from?

The origin is the story of Noah in the Book of Genesis. After the flood Noah sends a dove out of the ark three times. The first time it finds no place to rest and comes back, the second time it brings back a fresh olive leaf in the evening, the third time it does not return.

The olive leaf shows Noah that the water is going down and the land is growing green again. The DDR Museum in Berlin sums up the reading like this: the dove became the symbol of reconciliation between God and humankind.

The New Testament adds a second meaning. At the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, according to the Gospel of Matthew, he sees the Spirit of God descending "like a dove". Since then the dove has also been the image of the Holy Spirit in Christian art.

03Why does the dove have a branch in its beak?

The branch in its beak comes straight from the story of the flood: it is the fresh olive leaf the dove brings back to Noah. It shows that the danger has passed and life goes on. In imagery the leaf has become a whole branch.

This joins two signs of peace in one image. The olive branch is a sign of peace in its own right, for example in the emblem of the United Nations, which sets the map of the world in a wreath of olive branches.

A dove without a branch can mean the same, but is read more openly. Only the branch makes clear that what is meant is not love, purity or a messenger, but the end of a disaster and a new beginning.

04What role did Picasso play?

Pablo Picasso made a lithograph of a dove in 1949. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, he designed it for the World Peace Congress, the Congrès mondial des partisans de la paix, held in Paris that year. Picasso’s dove and its biblical allusion to the end of the flood came to symbolise peace in the second half of the 20th century.

According to the DDR Museum, the motif was chosen by the writer Louis Aragon, one of the organisers of the congress. He saw the drawing in his friend’s studio and suggested making it the image of the congress.

The dove quickly became contested. The World Peace Movement was close to the Soviet Union, and in the early 1950s the French group Paix et Liberté took up the motif in posters of its own to warn against communism. Picasso did not invent the dove, but he shaped its modern form.

05Where does the dove appear today?

The dove appears on posters, flags and badges, in church windows and on song sheets, in schools and at memorials. Because it is understood without words, it suits occasions where people of different languages come together.

In the GDR it was one of the most frequent political images. A poster with the dove inspired the kindergarten teacher Erika Schirmer from Nordhausen to write the song of the "little white dove of peace", which generations of children sang. In 1987 a dove with the inscription "Berlin – City of Peace" was put up at Berlin’s Nikolaiviertel.

This very example shows that a sign alone guarantees nothing. The DDR Museum points to the contradiction between the rhetoric of peace and the Wall; the independent peace movement of the GDR therefore chose a sign of its own, "Swords to Ploughshares".

06Since when has the word existed in German?

The German word Friedenstaube is much older than Picasso’s poster. The German Dictionary of the Brothers Grimm lists it in its fourth volume, whose first instalment appeared in 1863, and illustrates it with verses: “süsze liebe friedenstaube, / die du schnell den ölzweig bringst”, sweet dear dove of peace that swiftly brings the olive branch.

Even then, dove and olive branch belonged firmly together in German. Picasso and the World Peace Movement did not invent the image in 1949; they gave an old word a new political stage.